One of the hardest things with using the iPad in the classroom is finding the time to go through all of the apps in the iTunes Store listed under the education banner. We have started to list some of the apps we've found under each of the Key Learning Areas.

Pages

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Creating an Appropriate App Collection within your School Budget

Collections of Apps can be expensive. How do you locate appropriate apps at a reasonable price or better still for FREE. Here are some really easy ways to locate apps that might be useful in your classroom.

Developers change the prices of apps all the time to get them into the Top 100 or because of upgrades. Some iPad apps were originally only iphone apps that were free but could be used on the iPad. Gradually these have have been upgraded for the iPad - hence the price changes. As you can imagine it is very difficult to keep up with each and every price change in itunes. The best way of cause is to let someone else do all the work and then get them to send it to you. So the first thing I would suggest is locating a couple of sites that you find useful and then subscribing to their RSS feed.Websites:
Lots of websites have been set up as a way of locating appropriate apps. Some of these even have FREE search categories. Others allow you to create wish lists and then they notify you if price drops occur. I like to check the Best of Lists Free Apps every now and again to see if any worthwhile apps have been released. Check these out;

Apps:
There are even Apps that have been designed to locate FREE apps for the iPad. These Apps are free to purchase and they are regularly updated and make the experience of locating apps even easier. Some of these apps are designed to find apps that are in the categories you designate and then let you know if price drops have occurred. Other are more simply in the tasks they perform.

Twitter:
There are also numerous twitter accounts that specialise in app tracking and some of these you might find useful to follow. I must admit I cut back on these after I had my initial set of apps. I find I do not want my twitter account flooded by just a couple of feeds. Pick the ones that work for you.

@ipadappsales

@FreeAppsOrg

@AppAdvice

@iPadApp_Sale

@AppsforiPad

@AppClimb

@FreeAppsOrg

@freeappalert

@AppPicker

@freeappaday

@iPadApps_

@BrainGameApps

Twitter Hashtags:

Sometimes it is handy just to search specific Hashtags when you are looking for apps. Here are a list of # that I have found useful in the past. Not all of these are iPad app specific but they will often have reviews or news of new releases or free apps.

#ipadapps

#edapps

#edtech

#ipaded

#mlearning

#ipad

#ipadchat

#slide2learn

#iear

You also have numerous blogs about Apps, too numerous to mention here. Many of these have been mentioned on my blogsite - Appsineducation

Have you checked out KinderTown? We're currently reviewing apps and publishing them in our (filterable) list. Anything in the list has actual educational value over much of the questionable content in the educational app category.